A 155-strong company of Nigerian infantrymen arrived at Abuja aiport on Monday, ready to depart to the war-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur as part of an African Union force protecting ceasefire monitors. ”You are going to Sudan purely to assist our brothers and sisters in restoring a hope that is fast diminishing in them,” said Brigadier General Shekari Biliyak.
It’s a frustrated commuter’s escapist fantasy: literally lifting your car from a clogged highway and soaring through the skies, landing just in time to motor into your driveway. Engineers at Nasa, the Boeing Company and elsewhere say the basis for a flying car is there. At Nasa, the first goal is to transform small airplane travel.
There was no Madonna-Britney Spears kiss, no partially clad Howard Stern coming down from the rafters and certainly no wardrobe malfunctions. The MTV Awards show on Sunday featured typical frenetic energy and sexy style, and a few musical surprises, but it was mostly a kinder, gentler version of past shows.
The case of five soccer referees accused of match fixing was postponed in the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday to October 6. Bail was extended for Reuben Maruping Kgatla, Malose Jonas Mokonyane, Kgomase Michael Sikwe, Masithela Patrick Phandiwe and Christopher Choane.
HIV/Aids could reverse most of the development in Lesotho since independence and could drive the country into extreme poverty, the Central Bank of Lesotho has warned. The impact of the disease is being felt at all levels, with prolonged illness inducing financial hardships in many ways, said the bank’s Economic Review for the first quarter of 2004, released last week.
The intensive transformation process undertaken by the South African Post Office over the past three years is starting to reap rewards for the parastatal. Regarded by many at one stage as the Cinderella of the state-owned enterprises, the post office has for the first time in its 200-year history posted a profit.
The manager of a sex club and four of his patrons were arrested during a police raid in New Doornfontein, Johannesburg on Saturday night. ”We were working on information that drugs were being sold and used in the nightclub,” said police spokesperson Inspector Dennis Adriao on Sunday.
Sardine frenzy hit the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Monday as the tiny silver fish headed back home towards the Eastern Cape. Mike Anderson-Reade from the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board said a huge crowd was gathered at Shelley Beach and that at least 150 baskets had been filled with fish.
Responding to the need to protect clients’ fixed-deposit investment returns against potential volatility, Investec Private Bank’s Treasury team has created HedgePlus, a six-month, prime-linked fixed deposit, designed to hedge against fluctuations in returns using three leading economic factors.
The United States government warned its citizens to keep a low profile on Monday after a car bomb hit a private US security firm in the Afghan capital, killing at least seven people, including two Americans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack on the office of Dyncorp, which provides bodyguards for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and works for the American government in Iraq.